"Pretend" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would rather be plundered by an enemy than by fellows who pretend to come hither as friends. If Frederick would march in here, I would open my house free to all comers, and would not grudge the last drop of wine ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... artfulness of her years she is using me to practise on, as a dummy, for future occasions when she shall have grown a little bigger and more admired; she has already picked up one or two good notions. I pretend to be unaware of this fact. I treat her as if she were grown up, and profess to feel that she has really cast a charm—a state of affairs which, if true, would greatly amuse her. And so she has, up to a point. Impossible not to sense the joy ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Mortimer to catch a glimpse of which way his feet were pointing. I covered this by speaking to him, begging him to will me aright —to will me more earnestly—or some such bunk. I could invent many reasons for turning round; pretend I had lost my feeling of 'guidance,' or pretend I heard a sudden noise, as of danger, or even pretend I felt I was going wrong. Well, I got a peek at those feet as often as was necessary, and the rest was just play-acting to mislead the people's minds. Of course, when I stumbled over a stone ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... was fortunate that these two men were willing to incur such peril and anxiety in behalf of this same "honor of Congress," which otherwise would soon have been basely discredited; for that body itself was superbly indifferent on the subject, and did not pretend to keep faith even with ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... the events of the week. Gradually the truth was growing upon him that the pledge to do as Jesus would was working out a revolution in his parish and throughout the city. Every day added to the serious results of obedience to that pledge. Maxwell did not pretend to see the end. He was, in fact, only now at the very beginning of events that were destined to change the history of hundreds of families not only in Raymond but throughout the entire country. As he thought of Edward Norman and Rachel and Mr. Powers, and of the results ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... shame of love. Sara would never be afraid of life and its demands, and it seemed to her a matter of little moment that Garth had made no conventional avowal of his love. She did not, on that account, pretend, even to herself, as many women would have done, that her own heart was untouched, but recognized and accepted the fact that love had come to her with ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... much good if you didn't put them on," retorted practical Betty. "I hate getting up too"—Betty never failed in her experience of any form of suffering or unpleasantness—"but I try to make it a little different every day, to help me on. Sometimes I pretend the bath is the sea, and I am bathing; other times I only paddle my feet, and sometimes I don't bath at all—that's when I am playing that I am a gipsy ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... at our disposal; but he wished to be completely his own master, and he bought a place in Hertfordshire out of part of the money. It was a year or two after, that he met his second wife and married her. I don't pretend," continued Uncle Jasper, "that we liked this marriage or our stepmother. We were young fellows then, and we thought our father had done us an injustice. The girl he had chosen was an insipid little thing, ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... called because its defenders pretend to base it on the authority of St. Augustine, has some points of similarity with Thomism but differs from the latter in more than one respect, especially in this that the Augustinians,(745) though ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... upon the young maid's superintendence. He now undertakes a service or task that lasts, more or less, two, three, or four years, during which time he must look well to himself; for if anything be found out against him he is discarded, and never more can pretend to the hand of her he ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... pretend to prescribe all the various modes of occupation which it might be proper to allot them; I have already enumerated those productions, the culture of which I conceive might be most advantageously taught and disseminated by means of this institution. Others, however, of equal ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... mother. And you? You haven't given up the idea that he may marry you some day, if you stay here and pretend to have reformed. You write to him. George may have been foolish, but he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a great many Downe with the scurvy and our water being short, wee called a Consultation of Officers it being too late to pretend to get bengali the season being come that the N.E. Trade wind being sett in and our people almost every man tainted with distemper," it was determined to make for Carwar and "endever to ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... here," he said. "But, no matter what happens, pretend you think it's all right. Let anyone who speaks to us think we're foolish—it'll be easier for us to get away then. And keep your eyes wide open, if we stop anywhere, so that you will be sure to ...
— Facing the German Foe • Colonel James Fiske
... the ordinary man, to indicate methods of approach to art, and to trace the way of appreciation. It is essentially a personal record, an account of my own adventures with the problem. The book does not pretend to finality; the results are true for me as far as I have gone. They may or may not be true for another. If they become true for another man, he is the one for whom the book was written. I do not apologize because the shelter here put together, in which I have found a certain comfort, is ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... upon it; and so they sent for the princess. In she came, sliding and flitting and gliding from one piece of furniture to another, and put herself at last in an arm chair, in a sitting posture. Whether she could be said to sit, seeing she received no support from the seat of the chair, I do not pretend ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... I have told you that I am always haunted by a black shadow. However much I pretend to imagine that ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... presume no one will contend that they are. A man may have some power in the State of Virginia, given by its Legislature—the right to issue paper money, for instance; but if he remove to Ohio, he has not this right. No man would pretend to claim that any of the rights of Virginia ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins
... ladies of the same reputation. They almost immediately broke into tete-a-tetes, and of consequence one of the ladies addressed herself particularly to me. The vulgar familiarity of her manners, and the undisguised libidinousness of her conversation, I must own, disgusted me. Though I do not pretend to be devoid of the passions incident to my age, I was not at all pleased with the addresses of this female. As my companions were more active in the choice of an associate, it may perhaps be only candid to own, that she was not the most ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... then to come to myself. The power of her imagination was so great that I fancied myself face to face with the truth. I supposed she had been amusing herself; that she should have tried to frighten me was inadmissible. I don't pretend that I was completely at my ease, but I said, amiably: "You certainly have succeeded ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... exciting. But I could see that though the actress was very handsome and mostly so unhappy as to draw tears from the spectators, there were people, especially some gentlemen, who were more interested in looking at the box where I sat with Mrs. Hambledon. Indeed, I could not pretend, when I found myself before my glass that night, that I was not amazingly prettier than that Mrs. Colebrook, about whose beauty the whole town ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... yourself away, my poor Fisher," said T. X., and put a strip of paper before him; "you may disguise your hand, and in your extreme modesty pretend to an ignorance of the British language, which is not creditable to your many attainments, but what you must be awfully careful in doing in future when you write such epistles," he said, "is to ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... these pages I do not pretend to write the history of the war. I only give a few sketches and incidents that came under the observation of a "high private" in the rear ranks of the rebel army. Of course, the histories are all correct. They tell of great achievements of great men, who wear the laurels of victory; ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... what is reasonable, for fear they should? Certainly not. It would be barbarous to pretend to look into the minds of men. I would go further: it would not be just even to trace consequences from principles which, though evident to me, were denied by them. Let them disband as a faction, and let them act as individuals, and when I see them with no other views than to enjoy their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Having found a sufficient motive, no one would take the trouble to seek the real source,—to trace the affair to the instigation of Catherine de Medici. The alert mind of De Rilly, it is true, divining the equally keen mind of the Duke of Guise, had predicted that Guise might pretend a belief in such instigation, and so force the King to avenge De Noyard, in self-vindication. Mlle. d'Arency well knew that I would not incriminate a woman, even a perfidious one, and counted also on my natural unwillingness to reveal myself as the dupe that I had been. ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... a warning in all this. I don't pretend to say, but as we walk along here let me tell you of a conversation I had with a man who was worth nearly $20,000 before the flood. He has lost every cent, and is glad enough to get his daily meals from the supplies ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... stow portmanteaux, bags, tiffin-baskets, &c., under the seats and ourselves upon them, and then arranged a sort of centre-piece of Jane's big tin bonnet-box, surmounted by Freddy in his cage. The other passengers were very amiably disposed, and not fat, and they even went so far as to pretend to admire Freddy—a feat of some difficulty, as he is still very bald and of an altogether forbidding aspect. This admiration so won upon the heart of Jane, that in the fulness thereof she served out biscuits and a little tinned butter all round, while Freddy cheerfully spattered ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs, perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... he fell to studying the ground. David did not smile. He looked away, for he understood the longing that was in the heart of this lowly-born jester who did not even pretend to be ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... it's clear they don't want us to go down the river, but what their reasons are I couldn't pretend to say. They may have some sort of idea that for us to explode the mystery of the river and the white medicine man whom they regard as their own would be to lower their prestige as a tribe. It's hard to say. It's almost impossible ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... or a giantess, till she got quite fat and comfortable, while her owners had not enough to eat. So strange and ridiculous seemed our present fashion to the descendants of those who, centuries before, had imagined, because they had seen living and moving, those glorious statues which we pretend to admire, ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... not to go, telling me very seriously—for he was a good and sensible man—that it was indeed their business and duty to run all hazards, and that in so doing they might hope to be preserved; but that I had no apparent call except my own curiosity, which he said he believed I would not pretend was sufficient to justify my exposing myself to infection. I told him "I had been pressed in my mind to go, and that perhaps it might be an instructing sight that might not be without its uses." "Nay," says the good man, "if you will venture on that score, i' name of God go in; for depend upon ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... "you compare glowworms with evening stars, when you pretend to match Angelique des Meloises with the lady I propose to honor! I call for full brimmers—cardinal's hats—in honor of the belle of New ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... scurrilous account of the late little incident at our house, implying, indeed openly asserting, that there had been a wholesale attempt at poisoning. Names were not given, not even the initials under which the reporters of such gossip often pretend to disguise publicity, and in a measure avoid responsibility; but, to the initiated, there could be no doubt that the paragraph referred to my unlucky cookery. Further particulars, it was said, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... Miss Gordon; and everybody said how well matched they were, which certainly was paying no compliment to Sir Digby. He gave her many dances, and he said many soft and pretty things to her, which caused her to bend down her painted face and pretend to blush. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... who might the gentleman be? (Aside.) It is as well to pretend to be blind! (Aloud.) Who is he? ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... a land of surprises—India! I had had my ambitions—I had hoped, and almost expected, to be read by kings and presidents and emperors—but I had never looked so high as That. It would be false modesty to pretend that I was not inordinately pleased. I was. I was much more pleased than I should have been with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at his old work again," Mr. Santiago told his customer. "He and Moss Abrams were in my parlor. Moss sent out my boy for a stamp. It must have been a bill for fifty pound. I heard the baronet tell Moss to date it two months back. He will pretend that it is an old bill, and that he forgot it when he came to a settlement with his wife the other day. I daresay they will give him some more money now he is clear." A man who has the habit of putting his unlucky name to "promises to ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tends to corroborate the conjecture, that Vieux originally denoted a ford; and the word Ve, which is most probably a corruption from it, retains this signification in Norman French.—The Abbe, at the same time that he does not pretend to contradict the argument deduced from etymology, maintains that a careful comparison of the position of Vieux, with the distances marked on the Tabula Peutingeriana, and with what Ptolemy relates of certain towns adjoining ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... every word I say. There is a law as old as Germany that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people, SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words. Pretend humility. Pronounce your judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the throne. Do this until you are crowned and safe. It is not likely that your sex will ever be discovered; but still it is the part of wisdom to make all things as safe as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poetry, it has no reference necessarily to actual objects or events; it is concerned only with producing the effect of emotional congruity between incidents, objects, forms, or sounds. A great novel does not pretend to be a literal transcript of experience, nor a portrait of an actual person. When random mental activity is thus controlled, it is "imagination," in the popular sense, the sense in which poets, painters, and dramatists are called ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... "I will never pretend sorrow," said I; and, to say the truth, during his absence Miss Grant and I had been embellishing the place in fancy with plantations, parterres, and a terrace—much as I have since carried out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Frohman, as the crepes Suzette arrived in their chafing-dish. "My interest makes me pretend that the play's the thing. I congratulate foreign authors on a week of fourteen thousand dollars in Chicago, and they go away delighted. But I know, all the time, that of this sum the star drew thirteen thousand nine hundred dollars, and ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... Sabbath Valley quiet sweetness brooded, broken now and again by the bell-like sound of childish laughter here and there. The birds were holding high carnival in the trees, and the bees humming drowsy little tunes to pretend they were ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... laugh. "What a dear, clever, mischievous old man he is!" she muttered. "Of course he means that I am to join that riding party and make Lady Mary a little uncomfortable. Well, she really does deserve it. How dare she pretend that I am setting my cap at Lionel? Such a designing matron deserves some slight punishment, and she little knows what Mr. Cottrell and I can do when we combine together to ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... be worth sacrificing simply to acquire a woman who could sympathize with, and support, a man in the stress and battle of life, is a question we do not pretend to decide; but it is certain that the enfranchisement of woman would be the passing of a social Act of Uniformity, and the loss of half the grace and variety of life. Here, as elsewhere, "the low sun makes the color," and the very excellences ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... kind of you to remind me of my shame," replied Janice, with a gentle dignity very close to tears. "Deceitful I was and disobedient, and no one can blame me more than I have come to blame myself. But you are not the one to speak of it nor to pretend that my giddy conduct was ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... conventional, commonplace piety about it, which struck unpleasantly on Christ's ear. He answers the speaker with that strange story of the great feast that nobody would come to, as if He had said, 'You pretend to think that it is a blessed thing to eat bread in the Kingdom of God, Why! You will not eat bread when it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... about poor little Skeezucks? Say, I'll tell you what we'll do: I'll wait a little, and then send Field to the store and have him git whatever you need, and pretend it's all for himself. Then we'll lug it up the hill and slide it into the cabin slick ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... at the willing assortment of dreams playing Sally Waters around town. Isn't this borough a bower of beauty—a flowery thicket where the prettiest kind in all the world grow under glass or outdoors? And what do you do? You used to pretend to prowl about inspecting the yearly crop of posies, growling, cynical, dissatisfied; but you've even given that up. Now you only point your nose skyward and squall for a mate, and yowl mournfully that you never have seen your ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... with that I'm quite content, To that condition I assent, And since twice embraced by you Has that rascal soldier been, Whom the sea spewed out in spite, I will juggle with my sight, And pretend but once to have seen; And as I for two embraces Meant to give a hundred blows, I but fifty now propose For one half of my disgraces. I have totted up the score; You yourself the sentence gave; Yes, by God I swear, you'll have Fifty strokes and not ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... the poet who believed in it, whose name is Gregory. He has the pious wish to destroy the world; he may be Satan, if that person could ever pretend to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... that one-half of the proposals of marriage made by men are the direct result of pique. How closely this proposal of the Major's coincided with the recoil of his public humiliation I do not pretend to determine. Certain it is that he had no sooner written and sealed his letter than the shadow of a doubt began to ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the thing is good for science; I am not such a self humbug as to pretend that my vanity is not pleasantly tickled; but I do not think there is any aspect of the affair more pleasant to me, than the evidence it affords of the strength of our old friendship. Because with all respect for my noble friends, deuce a one would ever have thought of it, unless ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... seat in the stern, Belle, and Bess, you may sit here near me," said Cora, "as I suppose you will be interested in seeing how it works. Oh! There is the steamer from the train. Hurry! Perhaps there are folks aboard we know. Let us act at home, and pretend we have been running ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... low-minded people, who pretend to tell the story of Theseus and Ariadne, have the face to say that this royal and honorable maiden did really flee away, under cover of the night, with the young stranger whose life she had preserved. They say, too, that Prince Theseus (who would have ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sufferings are," I replied. "I can not make a step without exciting your alarm. Soon I will not be permitted to address a word to any one but you. You pretend that you have been abused in order that you may be justified in offering insult; you accuse me of tyranny in order that I may become your slave. Since I trouble your repose, I leave you in peace; you will never see ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... but if he should remain planted as fast as the Great Pyramid, if when started he should refuse to pay any attention to the little taps of your left heel and the touches of your whip, nay, if he should lie down and pretend to die, like a trick horse in a circus, don't cluck. No good riding master will teach a pupil to cluck or will permit the practice to pass unreproved, and riding-school horses do not understand it, and are quite as likely ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... am surprised that you should be, or pretend to be, ignorant that the property stands in your name. I have no more concern in it ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... their mother, "no one ever said this house was so nice as the large one where you were born, and we can't pretend life is so pleasant as if we had your father here with us; but we have a great deal to be thankful for. If we haven't much money, we have health and strength and each other. Your father said to me when he went away: 'Mary, if I don't come back, I don't want you and the children ever to forget ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... divine revelation, he manifestly usurps what belongs to God. It is for this reason that certain men are called divines: wherefore Isidore says (Etym. viii, 9): "They are called divines, as though they were full of God. For they pretend to be filled with the Godhead, and by a deceitful fraud they forecast the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... remember her perfectly well," said Frederic Raymond, who was standing near, "and so does Bob, but he wants to pretend he does not. By the way, Miss Ashton," continued he, "are you not afraid that Kate's marvelous beauty will endanger your claim upon Robert's heart, when he shall be near her constantly, and can only think of your blue eyes as 'over ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... amusement. A woman, we are sure, will not be always fair; we are not sure she will always be virtuous: and man cannot retain through life that respect and assiduity by which he pleases for a day or for a month. I do not, however, pretend to have discovered that life has any thing more to be desired than a prudent and virtuous marriage; therefore know not ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Vilas triumphed over the word after a slight struggle—"ulous! I shall review that: ridiculous of you to pretend to be interested in oil-fields. You are not that sort of person whatever. Nothing could be clearer than that you would never waste the time demanded by fields of oil. Groundlings call this 'the mechanical age'—a vulgar error. My dear sir, you and I know ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... us better, and are not so shy of us as strangers, we shall find out you are as clever again as you pretend to ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... Raillery, Satire, Sarcasms, and of every Kind of Poignancy and Pleasantry of Sentiment, and Expression, he seems to have perfectly succeeded; there being perhaps no Variety, in all the Extent of these Subjects, which he has not presented to View in this Description.—But he does not pretend to give any Definition of WIT, intimating rather that it is quite impossible to be given: And indeed from his Description of it, as a Proteus, appearing in numberless various Colours, and Forms; and from his mistaking, ...
— An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Railery, Satire, and Ridicule (1744) • Corbyn Morris
... interesting the topic selected. This point of view may be regarded as uncivilised, but it may be pointed out that it is only in the most civilised countries that the society of women is accessible to all men of their own social position. No one familiar with Eastern countries will pretend that Orientals shut up their women because they enjoy their company so much as to be unwilling to share the privilege with ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... wee, till our firm is doing a roaring business: I can pretend then to take in a male partner, p'raps. Rose and Lilian are very hard-working and we can't afford to lose them yet. If you appeared one morning dressed as a young man they might throw up their jobs and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... much pleased and surprised at your note about what you wrote in Spitzbergen. As you thought it out independently, it is no wonder that you so clearly understand Natural Selection, which so few of my reviewers do or pretend not to do. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... possible that it in reality only is because your leave of absence has expired, as the laws of Russia require that every absentee should return to his country once in every four years. Fulfil, therefore, this hard duty. Pretend to suppose that your recall is for no other reason than the renewal of your passport, and the giving you an opportunity to pay your homage to the empress. Appear innocent and unconcerned, and ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... trial. This whole story abounds in evidences of the prejudice and moral degeneracy of the Jewish leaders. They hated Roman rule past all words to tell and yet would pretend loyalty to Caesar to carry out their wicked purpose. By this means they put Pilate in a position that to release Jesus would make him appear to be untrue to Caesar in releasing one announced to be Caesar's enemy. The trial may be studied in the light ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... I could not pretend to suggest amusements that would appeal to any or every reader, but I can make my point clear that when one is tired it is healthy to have a change of activity before going ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... the corn bread; declared that it was not fit to be eaten, and she didn't know what made the stove act that way. But the milk she knew was good. Oh, she had forgotten that I didn't drink milk. Guinea smiled at me and clucked at her mother. "Don't pretend that you like anything just to please her," she said, when Mrs. Jucklin had turned about to keep a hoe-cake from burning. "All you've got to do is to say nothing until she gets through—that, and simply to remember that ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... immediately? Mr. Forley's death may, or may not, prevent his messenger from coming as arranged. But, if the person does come, it is of importance that you, as a relative of Mr. Forley's should be present to see him, and to have that proper influence over him which I cannot pretend to exercise." ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... to join in writing a letter to Scotland Yard, acquainting them with the murder, and the fact that the body was lying in the empty house. Birchill's object in acting thus was a twofold one. He dared not trust Hill to pretend to discover the body the next day and give information to the police, for fear he should not be able to retain sufficient control of himself to convince the detectives that he was wholly ignorant of the crime, and he also ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Grace. "Let's pretend we don't see them. Hurry up! I've got a quarter, and I'll treat you to sodas. Come on ...
— The Outdoor Girls of Deepdale • Laura Lee Hope
... Religion. Yes, in an age when the greatest mind of all, the mind of Pascal, proclaimed that the only help was in voluntary blindness, that the only chance was to hazard all on a bet at evens, you, Monsieur, refused to be blinded, or to pretend to ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... obtain the right response from Charmian. She had learnt, and had decided upon so much in Algiers that she was inclined to pretend that Algiers was very uninteresting. She did not fully realize that Claude Heath was naive as well as clever, was very boyish as well as very observant, very concentrated and very determined. And she feared to play the schoolgirl if she made much ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... me, I gave up all hope of being saved. It seemed impossible to me that anything that man could build could withstand so terrible a storm. I do not pretend to say that I was not afraid. The near prospect of a violent death caused my heart to sink more than once; but my feelings did not unman me. I did my duty quietly, but quickly, like the rest; and when I had no work to ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... strength, dominion, and influence; that the assembling an army in Flanders would engage the nation as principals in an expensive and ruinous war, with a power which it ought not to provoke, and could not pretend to withstand in that manner; that while Great Britain exhausted herself almost to ruin, in pursuance of schemes founded on engagements to the queen of Hungary, the electorate of Hanover, though under the same engagements, and governed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... to show you this garden, you that you want to see it. I no longer wish to show it to you, and you have never wished to see it. Let us cease to pretend. It is all my fault. I bothered you to come here when you didn't want to come. You have taught me a lesson. I was inclined to condemn you for it, to be angry with you. But why should I be? You were quite right. Freedom is my fetish. I set ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... superstructure of a theory for the want of sufficient breadth in its foundations. It is unphilosophical to construct a science out of a few of the agencies by which the phenomena are determined, and leave the rest to the routine of practice or the sagacity of conjecture. We either ought not to pretend to scientific forms, or we ought to study all the determining agencies equally, and endeavor, so far as it can be done, to include all of them within the pale of the science; else we shall infallibly bestow a disproportionate attention upon those which our theory takes ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... "Well, I don't pretend to be as good as some people are, but I really can't see any awful wickedness in ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... Mrs Clements was not to be measured by words. I was brought to their house a penniless, helpless, battered stranger, and they gave me all they had to offer, without money and without price,—with no expectation of an earthly reward. Let no one pretend that there is no Christian charity under the sun. The debt I owed that man and woman I was never able to repay. Before I was properly myself again, and in a position to offer some adequate testimony of the gratitude I felt, Mrs Clements was dead, drowned during an excursion ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... her, "it is no use for you to pretend to be shocked. I have a right to happiness. And happiness to me means being alone, under the stars, and walking barefoot ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... understood what it meant. To Clarissa the thing was as certain as though she already heard the words spoken. With Patience even there was no doubt. Sir Thomas, though he had told nothing, did not pretend that the truth was to be hidden. He looked at his younger daughter sorrowfully, and laid his hand upon her head caressingly. With her there was no longer the possibility of retaining any secret, hardly the remembrance that there ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... won't you pretend you do for a little while, long enough to come with me for a little walk—or else to talk to ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Supreme Artist himself who disposes of us and acts in us, while whatever is suggested by a reason insufficiently inspired by the contemplation of the divine handiwork is fatally incoherent, for we thus pretend to substitute ourselves for God, and God thenceforth leaving us to ourselves, surrenders us to all the discordant effects of ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... casual bounty. In China, where the real as well as nominal price of labour is very low, sons are yet obliged by law to support their aged and helpless parents. Whether such a law would be advisable in this country I will not pretend to determine. But it seems at any rate highly improper, by positive institutions, which render dependent poverty so general, to weaken that disgrace, which for the best and most humane reasons ought ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... "Nearly half-a-million, perhaps; at least they pretend that they can put sixty thousand men ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... "This is very foolish and dear of him, and I shall be compelled, in mere decency, to pretend to corresponding lunacies for the first month or so of our marriage. After that, I hope, we will settle down to some ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... the iconography of the dance does not pretend to be a history of the subject, except in the most elementary way. It may be taken as a summary of the history of posture; a complete dance cannot be easily rendered ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... rogues; but you'd better be a land lawyer than go to sea. 'Tis all very well for them as begin as officers, but for the men the life bean't fit for a dog. Aboard ship you'd meet some very rough company—very rough indeed. I don't pretend to be better nor most, but there be some terrible bad ones at sea. Of course it depends mostly on the skipper, but even where the skipper's a good 'un—and there be good and bad—he can't have his eyes everywhere, and I've knowed youngsters ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... just to let God know she is not pleased with him. She thinks he has treated her cruelly and tyrannically, and she will not pretend to worship him. She wants to show him how bitterly she feels the way he has turned against her. She used to say prayers to him; she will do so no more! and she goes to church that he may see ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... witnessing the advent of Chanzy, who is apparently expected to prick in with Faidherbe by his side, each upon a gorgeously caparisoned steed, like the heroes in the romances of the late Mr. G.P.R. James. Many pretend to distinguish, above the noise of the cannon of our forts and the Prussian batteries, the echoes of distant artillery, and rush off to announce to their friends that the army of succour has fallen on the besiegers from the rear. ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... represents. I should otherwise have supposed it to be the Shin-sian alluded to by Baldelli, and mentioned in the quotations which follow; and indeed it seems highly probable that two terms so much alike should have been confounded by foreigners. Semedo says of the Taosse: "They pretend that by means of certain exercises and meditations one shall regain his youth, and others shall attain to be Shien-sien, i.e. 'Terrestrial Beati,' in whose state every desire is gratified, whilst they have the power to transport themselves from one place ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... only go somewhere," I said. "Someplace where nobody knew me, where I could just live by myself for a while, and shut the doors, and shut out the thoughts, and pretend for a while, just pretend that ...
— Second Sight • Alan Edward Nourse
... Paint these floors tan or gray, if you want them to confess frankly that they're painted floors, or the shade of some wood if you want to pretend that they're ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... James said. "It is probable that, in a camp like this, there is someone who understands English. Very likely they are playing the same game with us that we are with them. They pretend there is no one who can speak to us; but, very likely, there may be someone standing outside now, trying to listen ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... determine. But before sentence shall pass, it is proper to explain more fully what has been intended, that censure may not be incurred by the omission of that which the original plan did not comprehend; to declare more particularly who they are to whose instructions these treatises pretend, that a charge of arrogance and presumption may be obviated; to lay down the reasons which directed the choice of the several subjects; and to explain more minutely the manner in which each particular part of these volumes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... on the army and ordnance extraordinaries, particularly in the American branch. What or how much reduction may be made, none of us, I believe, can with any fairness pretend to say; very little, I am convinced. The state of America is extremely unsettled; more troops have been sent thither; new dispositions have been made; and this augmentation of number, and change of disposition, has rarely, I believe, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... MAMMA,—If we pretend that this note comes to you from papa at the Palais, and that he wants us both to dine with his friend because proposals have been renewed—then the cousin will go, and we can carry out our plan of going ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac |
